[Breast carcinoma in men: a review of 21 cases]

Male breast carcinoma is a truly rare tumor the treatment and prognosis of which have been recently considered similar to female cancer. In this work we reviewed the clinical histories of 21 patients with breast cancer attended in our hospital over a period of fifteen years. Mean age was 60 years. The main cause of consult was the presence of painless nodules most frequently localized in the left breast. We have found a great latency period between the detection of the first symptoms and medical consult (almost 20 months) which by itself justifies that almost fifty percent of patients were either in stage III or IV. Global surveillance was 60% after 5 years excluding other causes of death that were not directly related with the tumor. Statistic analysis did not reveal any significant relationship, probably due to the small number of patients, between the prognosis of the disease and the presence of factors such as cutaneous involvement, duration of symptoms, thelorrhagia, patient age, lymph node [correction of ganglionar] involvement, or deep plane involvement, although a significant relationship (p less than 0.05) was found with TNM stage.